"What was his outer seeming?" Diogenes asked. Somewhat of a warmer color touched the girl's cheeks.

"My father has told me tales of the ancient heroes. I think he was blessed with all the comeliness and goodliness of the Golden Age."

Diogenes jeered at her enthusiasm with his voice, with his eyes, with every curve and angle of his misshapen frame--protesting against praise of beauty.

"Did he pilfer your silly heart from your soft body?" he asked. Perpetua answered him mildly, heedless of the sneering speech.

"He spoke me fair. He was grave and courteous. I know he was brave and good." She moved a little away, with her hands clasped, speaking rather to herself, but indifferent to the presence of the fool. "When God wishes me to mate, God grant that I love such a man."

The frankness, the simplicity, the purity of this prayer seemed to sting Diogenes to a fierce irritation. Leering and lolling, he advanced upon the girl.

"Did he kiss you upon the mouth?" he whispered, mean insinuation lighting his face with an ignoble joy.

The girl turned upon him swiftly, and there was a sternness in her face that made the fool recoil involuntarily and wince as if at a coming blow. But there was little anger in the girl's clear speech as she condemned the unclean thing.

"You have a vile mind," she said, quietly. "And if I did not pity you very greatly I should change no words with you."

Diogenes, nothing dashed by her reproof, neared her in a dancing manner, smiling as some ancient satyr may have smiled at the sight of some shy, snared nymph.

"How if I chose to kiss you?" he asked, and his loose lips mouthed caressingly. To his surprise the girl met his advances as no shy nymph ever met satyr, with a hearty peal of laughter, that brought the tears into her eyes and red rage into his. She thrust towards him her strong, smooth arms.

"I have a man's strength to prop my woman's pity," she said, as she broke off her laughter, "and, believe me, you would fare ill."

Diogenes eyed her with a dubiousness that soon became certainty. That well-fashioned, finely poised creature, with the firm flesh and the clean lines of an athlete, was of very different composition from the court minions who swam in the sunshine of Robert's favor, of late at Naples and now in Sicily. He had strength enough to tease them and hurt them sometimes when it pleased Robert to suffer him to maltreat them; but here was a different matter. He gave ground sullenly, the girl still laughing, with her strong arms lying by her sides.

"You seem a stalwart morsel," he grunted. "I will leave you in peace if you will tell me where to hide from the King's anger. Indeed, I do not greatly grieve to leave the city, for they say a seaman died of the plague there last night, one of those that came with us out of Naples."

He shivered as he spoke, and his bird-like claws fumbled at his breast in an attempt to make the unfamiliar sign of the cross. But the face of the girl showed no answering alarm.

"Neither the plague nor the King's rage need be feared in these forests," she said. "The pure breezes here bear balsam. As for the King's rage, there are caves in these woods where a man might hide, snug and warm, for a century. Bush and tree yield fruits and nuts in plenty, for a simple stomach."

"I will keep myself alive, I warrant you," Diogenes responded, "and to pay for your favor I will sing you a song." So he began to sing, or rather to croak, to a Neapolitan air, the words of the Venus-song of the light women of Naples:

"Venus stretched her arms, and said, 'Cool Adonis, fool Adonis, Hasten to my golden bed--'"

Perpetua's face flamed, and she put her fingers in her ears. "Away with you! away with you!" she commanded.

The fool stopped in his measure; it was no use piping to deaf ears.

"Farewell, fair prudery," he chuckled, and in a series of fantastic hops and bounds he reached the edge of the pine wood and soon was lost to sight within its sheltering depths.

II

THE COMING OF THE KING

When the last gleam of the fool's parti-colored habit had disappeared in the sanctuary of the wood, Perpetua took her hands from her ears and seated herself on a fragment of a fallen column that had formerly made part of the colonnade of the Temple of Venus. Here she sat for a while with her hands listlessly clasped, trying to disentangle the puzzling web of her thoughts. Her most immediate sensation was delight at the departure of Diogenes. The warm, fair day seemed to have grown old and cold with his world wisdom, a wisdom so different from all that she had ever been taught to venerate as wise.

"If I were a bird," she sighed aloud, "I could not sing while he was near. If I were a flower, I should fade at his coming."

She rose from her throne and blew kisses on her finger-tips to the birds that sang about her, to the flowers that flamed beneath her feet.

"Be happy, birds," she whispered; "be happy, flowers, for the withered fool has gone."

She spoke to the birds, she spoke to the flowers as she would have spoken to human friends if she had any; they were her friends, and she loved them dearly, and she believed with all her heart that they understood her speech. She bent tenderly over one tall plant and touched its golden crest. Diogenes had passed from her thoughts as she stooped and made the flower her confidant. "I wonder when the hunter will come again."

She turned and stretched out her hands in pretty appeal towards the woodland.

"Dear forest beasts," she whispered, "forgive me, for I think I shall rejoice at his coming."

She drew her hand across her forehead, as if she sought to banish distracting thoughts, thoughts that had no place before in the simple order of her life. Then, as one who seeks distraction in the fulfilment of an appointed task, she moved to take the great sword and dedicate herself to its service. Holding it surely and firmly in her strong grasp, she carried it to where the grindstone stood, and carefully laid the edge of the blade to the shoulder of the stone wheel, while she worked the treadle with her foot. As the wheel spun and the sword hissed on the stone, she sang to herself the old, old sword-song that her father had taught her, the song that men who made swords had sung in some form or other from the dawn of war:

"Out of the red earth The sword of sharpness; Blue as the moonlight, Bright as the lightning."

The song wavered on her lips to the merest thread of music and then faded into silence. Her body was still busy with the sword, but her mind had drifted away from the place where she was to the place where she had been a week ago, to that cool, green hollow in the wood where she had met the tired hunter. He came upon her through the cracking brush, through the parting leaves; he stood before her, the sunlight touching him through the branches, with a smile on his young, fair face; he saluted her with simplicity and grace, and as she gazed at him dim legends of Greek heroes crowded upon her and she could well have believed that she beheld Perseus the dragon-slayer or Theseus the redresser of mortal wrongs. Their speech had been scanty, but it still sounded sweet to her ears. He had said he was thirsty, and she gave him to drink from a familiar spring; he had asked for guidance, and she had shown him the way out of the forest.

That was all, or almost all. He had said he would come again; and, of course, he would come again. In her simple philosophy a given word was given, a promise ever redeemed. There was no trouble in her thought of him; she had been glad to meet this wonderful, joyous being; she would be glad to see him again; in the mean time there was pleasure in meditation. How bright his hair was and how kind his smile! and his eyes were like a mountain lake.

Perpetua was so absorbed by her thoughts and her task that she did not hear the soft sound of quiet footsteps on the grass as a man crested the hill, an old man, tall and gray and sturdy, dressed in a jerkin and leggings of faded scarlet leather, who stood upon the open space, silently watching her.

Once again the clear voice of Perpetua floated into the air:

"Arising, falling, The sword of sharpness, Weapon of Godhead, Baffles the Devil."

The song ended; the sword lay motionless upon the motionless stone; the girl's thoughts were in the green heart of the wood.

"I wonder what sweet name he carries. I wonder who was his mother. She must have been a happy woman. I wonder who will be his happy wife."

A tear fell upon the bright blade and startled Perpetua.

"I am too big a girl," she said to herself, "to be such a baby--and tears will rust on a sword."

As she wiped the sword clean with her sleeve, the new-comer advanced and touched her gently on the shoulder. The girl swung round with a cry of joy. She leaned the sword against a tree, and, running to the man, clasped him in her arms, the strong young girl clinging to the strong elder like some beautiful creeper encircling an ancient, stalwart tree.

"Oh, father!" she cried. "I am so glad you have come! I have been so lonely."

Theron's brown hand rested gently on the girl's head, and his brown face smiled love. There was trouble in his eyes, there was trouble in the lines of his forehead, but the sight of his daughter softened them, and she read nothing but greeting.

"Lonely, little eagle?" he asked, with surprise in his voice. The girl noted the surprise and laughed a little as she answered.

"I never knew what it was to be lonely before. You and I and the sword, and our songs, and the holy men, and the trees and the flowers and the furred and feathered woodlanders"--she ran through the sum of her companionships--"they seemed to make a perfect world of peace."

Theron heard the change in the child's voice, Theron saw the change in the child's eyes.

"Who has disturbed this world of peace?" he asked, and a frown grew on his face.

"Strangers," the girl answered, turning a little away, while the old man caught at the word and echoed it in fear and anger, while his hand went to the hilt of his knife.

"Strangers?"